Shots in the Dark
by Honey and Wine
Summary: Assorted drabbles, all about 100 words. None of these has any point or plots, they're all purely experimental.
1. Someday

Sakaki gripped his gun tight, holding it against his chest. He told himself to calm down, to think clearly, to pause before acting.

He glanced over at Amon, reminding himself how he was supposed to look when doing this job. Hunters were supposed to be smooth and capable; they were supposed to be able to do their jobs without sustaining a major injury. Amon did it right.

Sakaki knew it was a joke now. His injuries, being chewed out, the way they always watched his back.

Someday he'd surprise them.

Someday, when they didn't expect it, he'd get it right.


	2. Static

She brushed him in the hall. Silk of her dress. The harsh fabric of his trench coat. Electricity swept up her arm, speeding, rushing, sweeping through her veins and slamming into her heart.

His gaze snapped to the curves and angles of his face, tracing hot lines through her skin.

"Good night, Robin."

He turned.

Her sight followed --

the play of light on his dark hair, staining it the bluish-black of midnight --

_him._

Her chest tightened, her breath caught. If her mind were a book, it would read

_Quick death. Static. No need to mourn. Died in love._


	3. Creative Writing

Behind trendy-to-the-point-of-being-disgusting yellow glasses, Michael's eyes scanned the office. All clear, no one to catch him.

He closed the program he had been using as a cover, checking up on the background of a recent case. With an evil gleam in his eye, Michael leaned closer to his precious computer screen and let his long, pale fingers begin picking at the keys.

Words skittered across the screen.

_Chief and Hattori_

_Go home together every_

_Night. Kind of funny, eh?_

His fingers tapped out the pattern of syllables, rearranging and substituting words until he was satisfied.

Michael smiled, and pushed "save."


	4. Last Words

He thought they were going to die. She was covered in dust, blood dripping from some obscure wound that he couldn't find, couldn't touch, couldn't heal. Her breath was shaky, shallow, raspy, ricocheting off lungs that were encased in powder, weeping bloody tears through her virgin pink lips.

Amon wanted to say something to her, because they were going to die. Because none of the words he had said before had even hinted at what he wanted to say to her, and he wanted her to know ….

No words would come. Just his arm, wrapped around her shoulder.


	5. Affection

Amon's arms reached like snakes, coiling and twisting, enveloping the girl beside him. He pulled her closer to him, letting her feel how deep his breath was, his heart thudding through his chest to her backbone.

She squirmed, burying herself in his body. She sighed in time with him, her expiration, her heartbeat, her bloodstream in line with his. She squeaked when he flipped her onto her back, his tongue tracing the line of her collarbone, tasting the salt dried on her skin.

Amon grinned slightly when Kate's hands on his skin made his blood rush like no one else's.


	6. Taken

Nagira watched the small girl disappear into his spare room. Her hair caught the dim light of his office, shining copper and long by her face.

She was Amon's.

He didn't need to see his stupid little brother – _half-_brother, who wouldn't know a good thing if it walked up to him and kicked him in the nuts – to know that they were gone, lost to each other. Amon wouldn't have sent her here if he didn't feel something for her. If he wasn't worried about her.

Nagira watched her disappear.

She was Amon's.

Not his.

Never.

Damn it.


	7. The Blue Channel

Touko busied herself with the coffee pot, trying to think nice thoughts about the woman on her couch.

Her mother had told her plenty of adages about what happened when you thought mean things about people. But then, Mother had been a doormat, keeping all her tears quiet and hidden when Daddy cheated on her.

Amon wasn't fucking Robin. She knew that, at least. He would be too smart to reveal anything, but Robin wore her emotions the way she wore her hair – cryptic and obvious.

Touko kept her back to the girl, trying not to think about it.


	8. Damsel in the Tower

Robin sat up in bed, bathing herself in pale moonlight. Her chest felt heavy, her eyes puffy, her heart weak.

She touched her fingers to her eyes. She couldn't keep dreaming about him. She couldn't keep watching flames lick his skin, taste him, run their fingers across him. She couldn't watch her power devour him.

Not him.

But he'd never love her. He was a hunter; he'd never love a witch.

But she had nothing else left to hope for.

Robin looked up to the window, into the moon-drenched clouds.

"I'll wait for you."

Her knight in dark armor.


	9. Two Aspirin

Sakaki came home late, too tired to shower or make dinner. He hobbled into the bedroom, setting his bottle of prescription pills on the nightstand. He eased out of his clothes, favoring his left foot.

His mind flashed back to the dark side-street where they had caught the witch. He heard Amon's sharp voice telling him to duck. He felt himself move, but too slowly. He watched his bullets miss again, again, again ….

He rolled over, pretending not to cry; wincing with pain when accidentally hit his injured, bandaged ankle.

He just wanted to be better in the morning.


	10. Demolition Lovers

Amon kept his eyes fixed on the wet sidewalk in front of him. He focused on the rain, on the cars driving past, not on the girl ….

Her hair was wet. Her clothes were damp and clinging to her skin. The Pilgrim dress, harsh and old-world and proper was sticking to that delicate, girlish frame.

Profane.

Blaspheme.

Nothing would ever be the same now. Not after he had put his gun down, after he had refused his order to kill her. Not after he promised to stay with her, guard her, guard against her ….

He couldn't keep pretending.


	11. Texture

Michael kept his eyes closed, even though his fingertips were pressing against the glass of the windows. He knew that just beyond that pane of melted sand – that was how they made glass still, wasn't it? – there was a world he couldn't touch. He could press his fingers against the two-dimensional images he saw through this glass, but he could never feel texture. He could dream, and he could remember, but he could never pluck the outside world out of the frame, never taste it, never feel it.

There were reasons why Michael kept his eyes closed.


	12. Confession

"Do you love her?"

Nagira's eyebrow was raised, his eyes saying that it didn't matter how Amon answered, because he already knew the answer.

So Amon paused and thought his response over carefully. Not because he didn't know the answer, but because if he said no, he'd look like he was in denial. If he said yes, his brother would know his weakness.

Amon wasn't supposed to have weaknesses.

He didn't trust Nagira enough not to tell Robin. He couldn't say yes. It was a horrible idea to say yes.

"Don't worry," Nagira smiled, "I won't make you say it."


	13. The Beginning

Sometimes it seems like his life started when his mother died. He has a few foggy memories of before that, but nothing sharp or clear until he remembers the morning SOLOMON agents came to their house and killed her.

He remembers that her fingernails dug into his shoulder, that she pulled his small body in front of hers.

He remembers the shots, remembers the spray of warm, wet on his back.

As they pulled him out of the house, his hands gripped the frame of the door so tight …

He remembers it was the first time pain felt good.


	14. Unsaid

"Amon, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah."

"Do you --,"

She knew exactly what to say, but the words stuck in her throat. For every night he left her bed early, for every thought he never told her, for every touch that had been half-hearted, she wanted an answer.

But Amon wasn't the type to answer. He was a question in and of himself. He wasn't built for answers.

How could she even ask questions when she didn't want to know the answers?

"I'm sorry things couldn't have been better."

So was she.

But she still couldn't ask –


	15. Moment of Silence

Everyday Amon sees Robin praying. He can't figure it out.

Her rosary slips between her fingers, moving almost in time with the movement of her lips. He can't hear words, but he can hear the soft sighs of her breath as she whispers words. Sometimes it's Latin. Sometimes it's Italian. Once he could have sworn it was Japanese. The words don't matter, just the click of the beads.

He mused to Nagira once, quietly so she couldn't hear: "How can she keep praying now? How did she keep her faith?"

Nagira just smiled.

He doesn't understand, but he still watches.


	16. Flight and Plastic

From the second the Factory fell, they were never apart. He breathed in when she breathed out, rhythm of the blood in their veins holding the same pattern.

For the first time, he didn't shove her away. When they boarded a plane to get out of the country – passports, metal detectors, security guard, oh my! – he let her rest her tired head on his shoulder. He kept his hand over her arm, hoping no one would see blood leaking through the fabric.

He held her close without holding her at all, in a plastic chair, listening to airplanes roar through the dawn sky.


	17. Scope

The gun was cold in his hand. He wanted to put it down.

His hand didn't know how to take the bullet out of the chamber. He never had before.

They were in Rome when the options ran out. Wasn't that perfect? Amid ruins, columns,

Renaissance architecture and oil paint her battle with the inevitable.

And hadn't he always known?

He'd seen this before. At work, down the barrel of a gun, and earlier than that ….

Not again ….

He was always looking at it through the barrel of a gun.

_Not again!_

What other way was there to look?


	18. Storms

It was raining. The power went out early in the afternoon. At first it wasn't so bad. It was humid, the house was dead silent, but it was ok. Then, when the sun went down, shadows got too dark, too long. Amon didn't like the dark, remembering how at Solomon training they were taught to work at night.

"Robin, can you light some candles?"

She obliged. Green eyes flashing quickly, flame slowly growing beneath her gaze. She let her hair down, gold in the light.

She looked at him, and smiled.

It was a dark and stormy night ….


	19. The Ending

He was with her when she went. He was holding her hand, the way he always figured he would.

It was very peaceful when the doctor turned off the machines. He sat by her side, their daughter at the foot of her bed, weeping quietly into a tissue. She said her goodbyes very weakly, squeezed Amon's hand, smiled at their daughter, and breathed out.

Amon sighed once, when she went.

"Don't worry, Dad," his daughter told him. "If the house gets too big for you alone, I have room."

He nodded and reached for his walker.

_Women survive their men, men don't survive their women, _he'd heard.

When he let go of her hand, he knew it was true.


	20. In Bed with Ghosts

Sometimes, when Nagira wanted to think, he wandered up to the spare room in his office. He would lie on the bed, next to the ghost of Robin, hearing her breathe, cry, shake, long for his brother and a way out.

When he was really worried, he would tell her it was going to be ok.

Once in a while, when he looked around he thought he saw them. A passing reference in a magazine to a certain book, a cryptic ad, the silence in between songs on the radio, it all felt like them to him.

He believed they were ok.

He had to believe they were ok.

Sometimes, when he couldn't think because Robin's breaths were too shaky, when he heard Amon's sigh and the whisper of his hair when he looked down defeated, he'd roll to the side and shut his eyes tight.

"It's going to be ok. You're alive. You're alive."


	21. Blood to Stone

Inspired by Vendetta Red's "Shiver."

When he looked at her from a certain angle he saw the snakes in her hair. They would twist around the curves of her face, slithering around her eyes, her lips. They hissed at him, taunted him, calling him to come closer, taste her, offer his lips, his tongue. They coiled, curled and turned.

"Come to our altar," they teased, sibilant. "We want blood. We want sacrifice."

Every night he dreamed of his Medusa.

Every night she turned him to stone.


	22. In The Event Of

He stayed quiet. They talked kindly to him, screamed at him, threatened him, hit him, shot things into his veins so he'd tell the truth, and he stayed quiet ….

"Where is she?"

"What was her condition?"

"How far had her power extended?"

"How much does she know?"

He faced the floor, not meeting their eyes. Sometimes he had a ghost of a smile on his face. Because there were words they could never wring from his lips, knowledge that would never get out of his brain.

He didn't even breathe loud enough for them to hear.


	23. Alibi

It made her giddy, but she didn't say anything.

She signed the piece of paper he laid out in front of her, a false name, a false scribble that no one would be able to recognize as hers.

"It's easier if we do it this way," he said. "It'll raise fewer questions." He seemed a little amused, maybe a little embarrassed.

She looked at his false name next to her false name, and the stylized letters at the top reading **_Marriage License._**

It wasn't real. It didn't mean anything. But it still made her hands shake.


	24. Intoxication

The sky above them was bruised and dark as wine. They stumbled through the stars, drunk, lost, both a little scared. He had her in his veins, singing through his skin, sliding through him, slipping past his brain and down his spine and kicking off his heart.

He and his brother collapsed in one of their apartments (not that it made a difference which) and curled up like cats near each other, a breath away, but not touching. He could smell Nagira's breath – the alcohol, the gambling problem, the confession that as hard as he tried, he couldn't feel much of anything anymore. His couldn't have been any better.

"I love her," he said to the darkness, the girl bubbling like champagne in his throat. "I can't, but I --,"

"Yeah," said Nagira, softer. "I know you do."


	25. Peace

Karasuma comes home to an empty apartment. She likes it that way.

She used to want a man to be here, someone who would make her a nice mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows, someone who would slip off her shoes, rub her feet and ask about her day.

Back when she cared enough to date, she learned it wasn't practical. Men who would be there when she got home were unemployed. The ones with good jobs never had time for her. They wondered why she never talked about work. They really wondered why she always wore gloves. They wondered why sometimes, after staying the night, she would throw them out, why she would look so scared and sad and wouldn't make eye contact with them.

Karasuma comes home to an empty apartment. She makes herself a mug of hot chocolate, and she puts whipped cream in it, not marshmallows, just for the hell of it. She soaks her feet in a tub of warm water, and settles in to read a magazine.

She doesn't mind the quiet anymore.


	26. Tone

It was like they moved around the world, tramping across continents, skimming oceans, traveling miles from point to point to end up in the same damn hotel room every time.

There was always a print of watercolor flowers on one wall. There was a faux blonde-wood cabinet with a cheap TV (if they were lucky, HBO). There were always two nightstands, two lamps (one of which never worked), and Bibles in the drawers. There were floral borders around every wall.

Every time Amon saw the same hotel room in the same shades of beige, he couldn't stop himself from thinking how deeper the green in her eyes seemed.


	27. Options

It was taking Amon a very long time to walk up the stairs. His gun was weighing him down – or was it his conscience? Or was there a difference?

He'd been watching her, of course. He saw the way she handled the hunters Solomon sent, the way she dodged any missile, broke any curse. And all he had was a gun. And he knew if he couldn't kill her no one could.

But every step seemed longer, every step heavier.

How do you kill the girl you dream about? How do you kill the girl you couldn't kiss, because you felt like if you tasted her, she would disappear? How do you kill the girl who you see every time you close you eyes?

He knocked on the door twice, and put his finger on the trigger.


	28. The Marathon

Touko knows that this isn't going to last. Nothing lasts with Amon. People, words, places, they slide off him like water. Things don't touch Amon the way they touch other people. Even she doesn't touch Amon, no matter how many times she slides her fingers across his skin.

He lays in her bed, almost asleep. He's not going to stay now. He's like smoke, he's impossible to catch. And yet she keeps running ….

She strokes his hair. She hopes he stays all night, even though he won't, even though it'll just make it hurt worse in the morning.

It's amazing her that the more of him she gets, the emptier she feels.


	29. Prelude

Maria is sitting in Toudo's lab, waiting for him to notice her. She plays a game sometimes where she'll sneak in, quiet as a kitten, sit in the corner of his lab with a book and see how long it takes before he realizes she's there. Last time it was four hours.

She brings him meals, occasionally. She used to watch the clock carefully, make sure he had a proper breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now she doesn't bother. She cooks a meal when she thinks of it. She doesn't even bother to cook decent food anymore. He doesn't notice.

Toudo looks up now, and he stares at her for a long time. He doesn't look very good, a bit pale, a bit ragged.

"What?" Maria asks, softly, wondering what science babble he'll want her to listen to now.

He says at last, "I have an idea …."


	30. Fireworks

For New Year's Eve, they decided to sit on the roof of their apartment building and watch the fireworks. It was freezing cold and the wind was bitter and sharp, so they wrapped up in fleece blankets.

The fireworks were lovely. Amid the loud cracks of fire and powder and silhouetted against stars like chips of ice, color popped and twisted. They flashed green and blue and red and yellow, lighting up the circle of Robin's face.

Amon watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes were wide, and her jaw was trembling, she was so cold. He moved a bit closer to her, and threw one end of his blanket around her.

"Amon," she asked quietly. "What is your New Year's resolution?"

"My resolution?" he repeated.

He leaned in towards her. She closed her eyes ….


End file.
